This Advent, as I was looking towards Christmas I began to realize more and more that I do not wish to celebrate it this year: not another Christmas sad and alone, not trying to fill the void and the absence of the one I love with decorations and chocolate. I don't want to celebrate Christmas not even a little bit, not even at all since it is clear to me that I will be alone, yet surrounded by too many people. And since I can't spend these days with the one I love the most, all I really want is having the possibility of going somewhere where I don't know a soul. Somewhere I am completely alone and I can go to Mass, then take a long long midnight walk around a pretty burg. But out of various reasons that is not possible. So here I am, caught between moaning about this year's Christmas and swinging and singing to Benedict, the 6 months wonder I babysit.
So I decided I needed to do something special, something I wanted to do in a long while, something that would make me feel better. So I decided baking a Dresdner Stollen. Because it's Jesus's birthday, and though I said I wouldn't go, someone wise told me: "That's perfectly fine. But you can't stop Him from coming to you." And that's true, and I kind of hope He'll come and I thought it would be nice having a piece of the most wonderful Christmas cake in the world on the table. And there's another thing: I like to make-believe. So I just pretended that one of the Stollens will get to the one I love. I just pretended he'll love it, I just pretended he'll be happy to know I made it and to know I made one for him too. Oh yes, and I made the marzipan myself, too.
I love backing. I simply love that. The oven (which I don't possess at home) is the only thing I miss about my parents's house. So yesterday I went there and I started preparing: to me, that has the value of a ritual. I just enjoy every little moment of it, every small detail. I love getting my hands in the dough and molding it, I love the smell of raisins sunk in rum and the scent of freshly grated lemon and orange, and naturally, the smell of almonds which was all over the place and all over my clothes. It's just a very pure bliss. And I cover the dough and put it in a warm and dark place and put a blanket on top of it and I say a prayer that the cake will be good and I don't enter that room for two full hours. I just like doing this with piety, like a prayer, like a healing process. And when I put the cake in the oven I like staring at it for a while meditating about the reasons behind this act of love. To me, baking sweets is an act of love. I usually do it for those people who are special to me, friends, family or the most dear ones. This time too I split the dough in two: one for my parents, one lovingly made Stollen for my most dear one. And even if I would tell him about it he probably wouldn't accept it, but it's even more probable that I won't even dare to tell him about it, because he's not really a Christmas person. But that's ok. Even if I never give this Stollen to the one I made it for, that's ok. I needed to bake it. That's how I am. I am very selfish like that: although I try to accept the other one's freedom of not responding to my feelings, I always feel the need of expressing them even when facing rejection, sometimes, even at the cost of the other one's comfort. That's how I'm made, and it's a bit stupid. It's stupid baking a cake no one's going to eat, it's stupid believing "almost six impossible things every morning before breakfast", it's stupid preparing and anticipating a miracle that might never take place. And in the end it's bitter. It's very bitter to be alone, it's very bitter not to be able to talk to the one you love, it's bitter always being far away, it's bitter not knowing if it will ever get better. But through all this bitterness I pray every day for hope and love and faith. And every night when I go to bed I check myself to see if I still have hope. And that small fragile hope, that tiny tiny, so so tiny belief that this what I feel is right, that is just the right amount of sugar to this bitterness. And that, my dear ones, that's how marzipan is made. Because not everything that's bitter is bad, and sometimes bitterness can have a wonderful taste if you add to it a tender bit of sweetness. So my Stollen is about that. About accepting this bittersweet Christmas. About realizing that God loves me even though I'm foolish, and stupid and subjective, even though I exaggerate and I am very emotional. This Stollen is about me trying to let go and spend this Christmas in silence and peace, accepting that even though I am not "incandescently" happy, I am blessed and I am thankful. I am thankful for all the miraculous things that have happened this year, I am thankful for having such a beautiful soul to think about while baking a Stollen, I am thankful for loving. What's bittersweet about it is that I love in solitude. But that's ok, I would rather love from the distance than not love at all.
Oh, and P.S. this is my favorite bittersweet Christmas song :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9jbdgZidu8
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